A village rises

The village sprouted from Orange County's Great Park, seemingly from nowhere, in a matter of days. And it's something new under the sun.

First, it's packed with college students eager to welcome visitors. And its 19 cunningly engineered houses sap no electricity from the power grid; in fact, they feed some back in.

Movable walls, windows that double as solar panels, superefficient houses built for the searing deserts around Las Vegas or the freezing landscape of northern Canada.

Zero-emission cars and motorbikes parked in the driveway.

Welcome to the Solar Decathlon.

For the first time since the U.S. competition began in 2002, it will be held outside Washington, D.C., with Irvine's application to host the event chosen over competing proposals.

Nineteen teams from around the nation and the world have converged on the Great Park to assemble the ultra-energy-saving, solar-powered houses they've been working on for the past two years.

And they'll be trying to wow the public, as well as competition judges, to take this year's title, and have their homes declared the most appealingly designed and energy-efficient on the block.

But the idea also is to capture the public's imagination and inspire builders to expand energy-saving, “green” building design throughout the marketplace.

“People have this notion that green energy is expensive, unattainable,” said Justin Kang, 26, an architectural graduate from the University of Southern California who grew up in Cypress.

“We want to show through the solar decathlons that you can get good designs, affordability and be environmentally friendly without having a financial burden.”

Kang is project manager for his team, which designed the fluxHome for this year's competition.

“The concept behind our house is that Southern California is in constant flux, constant change,” he said. “We want to make sure the house is adapted to the microclimates of Southern California.”

To that end, the team conducted wind-tunnel tests to design skylights that could funnel winds through the house to help keep it cool.

Inside, energy monitors display power usage for appliances not in kilowatt hours, but in “dollars and cents,” Kang said – a way, perhaps, to inspire homeowners to watch their energy use more closely.

AFFORDABLE AND INNOVATIVE

The housing designs, and the technology inside, must be affordable, said Richard King of the U.S. Department of Energy, who came up with the idea of the solar decathlon and has been closely involved ever since.

“We try to tone down some of the space-age technology that the teams want to bring,” King said. “We forced them to use off-the-shelf, affordable technology. So the key to the decathlon is bringing what's available today in designing something from the ground up, so it all works well as a system.”

But the students also must make their designs exciting.

“They've got to put some wild coolness into it,” King said.

One example of such an attempt might be the Caltech-Southern California Institute of Technology team's DALE, or Dynamic Augmented Living Environment, made of modules that slide apart on rails when weather permits – and can triple the house's square footage.

“Our house moves,” said team-member Zeke Millikan, 22, a recent Caltech graduate in mechanical engineering. “We really wanted to take advantage of the climate and embrace the outside.”

Closed up, the house is 600 square feet; fully opened, it's 1,800, complete with an interior courtyard, decks and canopies.

And all the house's gyrations are under its own power.

“All of the power that's used by the house is generated by solar panels mounted on canopies,” said team member Ella Seal, also freshly graduated from Caltech.

Members of several of the teams, which came to Orange County from across the country and as far away as Czech Republic, said their designs were highly attuned to the natural surroundings from which they hail.

The University of Nevada Las Vegas' DesertSol house includes an exterior of preweathered wood and rusted steel, rain-capture devices for desert downpours and solar panels that double as overhangs to provide shade.

The SHADE house (Solar Homes Adapting for Desert Equilibrium) is a collaboration between Arizona State University and the University of New Mexico.

It takes its inspiration from the ribs and needles of the saguaro cactus, which provide the plant with shade; wall screens in the house have a similar function.

“We're trying to use more passive means for cooling and heating,” said team member Alia Taqi, an architectural graduate student at ASU and public relations manager for the project.

At the other extreme is Borealis, the offering from Team Alberta, University of Calgary. The three-module house is designed for the harsh cold of northern Alberta, Canada.

“Our entire house is meant for two people,” said Alexandre Ste-Marie, project manager for the team and a student at the University of Calgary. “You can configure the space as a living environment or as a work space.”

It includes “sun tunnel” skylights and a “living wall” of plants in the bathroom and is meant to meet the needs of Canada's booming resource industries, he said.

CHANGING INDUSTRY

While the Solar Decathlon's true effect on the housing industry is difficult to measure, contest director King listed specific examples of homebuilders working with decathlon teams to put their designs into production – including teams in Vermont and Washington, D.C.

“Yes, the builders watch it, and actually accept and use the technologies over time,” he said.

And Joyce Mason, vice president of marketing at Los Angeles-based Pardee Homes and a specialist in green technology, said she has seen many of the innovations introduced in past decathlons work their way into the wider market.

“Things like house controls – being able to use your iPhone and iPad to control your house – we saw these things first at the Solar Decathlon,” she said. “Now we're seeing them more and more in people's homes.”

The fact that builders as well as the public can tour the homes, and that the students themselves often become part of the industry, helps push the technology into the mainstream.

“Builders can see new ideas in action, see the potential for their own business,” she said. “Over the years, many of the things we see in the Solar Decathlon have made their way into the industry.”

The students said green building and energy efficiency have permeated their education, and for them have become a kind of standard practice.

“I definitely think solar is almost a no-brainer,” Taqi of ASU said. “There's no excuse. You can use it in any climate and any situation; there's sun everywhere.”

So the homes that sprang to life on the Great Park's solar block might just be a glimpse of the future.

“I don't want to speak on behalf of my entire generation, but I'm going to,” said Ste-Marie of the University of Calgary. “It just makes sense. It's cost effective. It can save energy, and you're doing a little bit of your part to reduce carbon emissions without compromising your comfort.”